Hidden Talents

Serenity.” Caleb's voice grew darker and deeper. “This is just business.”
    “According to you, business is not my forte.”
    He drew a deep breath. “Look, you need me if you're going to proceed with your big plans to get a mail order operation going here in Witt's End. Admit it.”
    “Maybe I'll try opening the new business without the aid of a fancy start-up consultant,” Serenity mused. “Lord knows that every time I get involved with men from your world I wind up getting burned.” She shook her head in disgust. “You'd think I'd have learned my lesson by now.”
    “Men from my world? What is this? You make it sound like I come from outer space.”
    “You might as well have come from Mars as far as I'm concerned.” Serenity curled her legs under her and took a swallow of tea.
    “Damn it, I'm not some kind of freak.”
    The savage edge in his voice startled her. It was almost as if, deep down, Caleb believed he might actually be some kind of freak. An unwelcome sense of empathy tingled inside Serenity. She knew that feeling of being different, of not belonging, of being an outsider. She had felt it often enough during her years at Bullington College.
    “Look, there's no getting around the fact that you and I come from different worlds,” she said. “For the record, I tried living in your world once upon a time. It was a disaster.”
    Caleb frowned. “What do you mean, you tried living in my world?”
    Serenity lifted one shoulder in a small shrug. “Believe it or not, there was a time when I couldn't wait to see Witt's End in my rearview mirror. I was seventeen and ready to take on the world. I started with Bullington.”
    The corner of Caleb's mouth twitched. “Bullington is only thirty miles away.”
    “It was a start. In any event, for me it might as well have been the other side of the world.”
    “I can see how being raised here in Witt's End might not give you a truly cosmopolitan background,” Caleb said dryly.
    “Life is different here,” she agreed quietly. “At any rate, I enrolled in Bullington College, and after I graduated I worked there for a while as an instructor in the sociology department. For a time I lived on campus. I wanted to be normal, you see.”
    “Normal?” Caleb gave her a quizzical look.
    “I guess all kids rebel against the lifestyle and upbringing they experience in their childhood. Kids raised in conventional, middle-class households want to be free. They want to break the rules.”
    “What did you want?”
    “Me?” Serenity grimaced. “Believe it or not, I wanted rules. I was raised without structure and routine, so naturally I longed for a world where people did things on time. A place where you could count on a certain degree of orderliness. A place where people planned for the future instead of just going with the flow. I thought I wanted to live in an environment where people worked regular hours instead of waiting for inspiration to strike.”
    “I see.”
    “I wanted a savings account,” Serenity continued, amused as always by her own youthful ambitions. “I wanted a car mechanic who didn't try to fix a broken water pump with a meditation mantra. I wanted a fulfilling, successful career in academia complete with retirement benefits.”
    “What did you find?”
    “I found out that savings accounts pay very low interest rates, that car mechanics who don't chant mantras are not any better than those who do, that the academic career ladder is very slippery, and that no one can count on retirement benefits anymore.”
    Caleb sipped his tea. “You learned a lot.”
    “Uh-huh. And the lesson that I learned best is that I don't fit into the so-called normal world. Oh, I can pass for a short period of time, but I can't live there very happily for any extended period. I was born into an eccentric, frontier society, and that's where I'll always feel most comfortable.”
    “You think you fit in here at Witt's End?” Caleb asked.
    “It's home. People know me here. They understand me and accept me for what I am. Here in Witt's End, we're very tolerant of each other's eccentricities.”
    “Is that a fact?”
    Serenity set her back teeth. “Believe it or not, no one around here would blink an eye at the notion of someone posing nude for an artist. Happens all the time.”
    Caleb placed his cup very carefully on the beautifully polished end table that Julius Makepeace had built by hand. “But you need someone from my world to help you get your